What Are The Chances?
by imnemocomeandfindme
Summary: Danny's moved on from life after splitting up with his long-term boyfriend Dougie 18 months ago, but his best friend Tom suspects he's still a little heartbroken. Dougie's now a famous model, dating the gorgeous Harry Judd. What happens when Dougie and Danny end up in the same shop? Pones and Pudd. Better than the summary I promise!


_**A/N: This is something I just got in my head today and had to write. I'm not sure yet if it's a oneshot or if I should do a sequel, but if you like it then comment and I'll probably do more!**_

_**Thanks for reading anyway, and any and all support is always appreciated! Your comments make me smile :D**_

"Why did I agree to this again?" Danny groans, looking around the department store they're in. Shopping isn't really his thing, and it's beyond him why his best friend, Tom, wanted to do it either.

"Because we're having a boy's day out, and Gio suggested this," Tom says, with an overly cheery smile. Damn him and his happy marriage. Even if Danny likes Giovanna, Tom's wife, it's still annoying that it leaves Danny still single.

Danny just groans, letting Tom pull him round the Christmas department of the shop. It's still October, for god's sake, but they start earlier every year, and Tom loves the damn things. He manages to feign interest in a few toys, and the fake snow does actually make him smile a bit, but he can't really focus properly.

He and Tom are laughing at a huge, lit up and glittering penguin model when Danny hears something that makes him look round so fast his neck cricks. It's two girls talking excitedly by the shelf of candy canes behind them, just loud enough for him to hear.

"Oh my god! Dougie Poynter's here!"

"No way!"

"Swear to god Megan just texted me! He's somewhere in the clothing department, and he's brought his hot boyfriend, the one with the gorgeous eyes!"

"Harry something, isn't he?"

"Who gives a damn what his surname is?! They're here! Come on!"

The girls run off, clutching each other and squealing with excitement. Danny turns to Tom, who's got his eyebrows raised and lips slightly pouting. Danny knows that face, and it rarely means good news for him.

"No, Fletcher. No way."

He knows what Tom wants. He wants to get Danny to talk to Dougie, his ex-boyfriend turned superstar model, because he's worried that Danny has a broken heart. Which isn't true. It's just wounded, but he's sure that given time it'll get better.

"But if he's here… and when else are you going to see him?" Tom says pointedly, and Danny wishes he had more good retorts to Tom. It's not his fault Tom's some kind of super reasonable clever guy or whatever.

"He's with his boyfriend."

"Yeah. And what's Harry Judd going to do to stop you? He doesn't even know you!"

Dougie started dating another model, called Harry Judd, about three months ago, not that Danny's been counting. That guy's all sorts of gorgeous, but just not Danny's type. Obviously Dougie must've got over their breakup faster than Danny. Even if he was the one that got dumped. Even if it was for a good reason. Maybe.

"It's not a good idea, Tom! I wouldn't even know what to say!"

"Doesn't matter!" Tom says, with absolute certainty, and then just watches Danny for any signs of giving in and going to talk to his ex. He eventually sighs at Danny's stony face, and grabs him, forcibly pushing and pulling Danny towards the clothes section. And Danny puts up a fight, but Tom's taller than him, and surprisingly strong, and maybe if he's absolutely honest with himself he's curious what would happen if he saw Dougie, if Dougie even remembers him…

By the time Tom's got him through the women's department, Danny's pretty much stopped fighting, and is reluctantly letting himself be pulled by the wrist forward into the racks of men's clothes.

"Excuse me," Tom says, back to being his usual polite self as he taps a shop assistant on the shoulder, "I'm looking for the model, Dougie Poynter. I heard he was here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but he and his friend left just a minute ago after trying on some clothes. I'm afraid they weren't signing anything anyway…"

Danny absently listen to Tom explaining that they didn't want signatures, but thank-you anyway, and tries not to show any signs of disappointment. It can't have worked though, because Tom looks so sympathetic when he turns back to Danny that Danny feels like he might as well be crying right in front of him.

"Sorry, mate. Worth a try."

Danny hums in response, idly looking at a stack of t-shirts next to them. He feels weirdly like someone just broke a promise to him.

"S'okay. I might as well buy something while we're here, though, eh?"

He picks up a few of the shirts around them and Tom smiles encouragingly. Danny tries to look happy, if only so his best friend doesn't feel bad. Tom got on well with Dougie, but always said he would stand by Danny first and foremost, so the two blondes fell apart too when the breakup happened.

"Yeah. You go and try them on. I'll wait out here."

Tom grips his shoulder briefly before letting Danny go to the changing rooms. Danny wishes Tom knew how important he was to him, but he hopes that Tom knows without him saying. He's no good at words, but Tom mostly just gets him. Like after he broke up with Dougie, Tom seemed to know something was up the second he saw Danny, and even though Danny didn't give his reasons, he suspected that Tom always knew why.

They'd been going out for a year and a half when Dougie got spotted by a pair of fashion scouts. It was while they were on holiday, in America, and they asked him to do a photoshoot there and then, on the street. Dougie had blushed and declined the offer, but Danny had eventually persuaded him to do it, even if he was a little jealous of other people sharing in the beauty of his boyfriend.

But then things started getting bigger. Everyone wanted the hot new model with sparkling eyes and soft blonde hair. His small frame was unusual and alluring, and he was so easy to get on with, and they all loved him. But he didn't want to leave Danny to do all the trips for photoshoots, but that meant he was losing work, and that killed Danny. He was being selfish, he thought, to keep his boyfriend from such success, and so he had to end it, for Dougie's sake. Something he had never told anyone, though, not Tom and not his sister or any of his friends, was that he was scared, too, of what fame would do to him and Dougie, if they could have stayed as perfect as they had been, or if they would have cracked apart with the strain.

Danny hung the shirts up on a hook in his little room, locking the door behind him, and rubbed at his face in the mirror. He looked tired, even he could see it in the circles under his eyes. He pulled his own shirt over his head, and dropped it on an empty hook, grabbing at one of the others and pulling it over his head, pushing his curls out of his eyes where they had tumbled down his forehead.

The shirt wasn't bad. He might as well buy it, just to make the day worthwhile, he thought, turning round to see how it fit him in the mirror. That's when he noticed it: a leather wallet, obviously dropped, in the corner of the changing room.

Danny picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It looked familiar, but then it was just a wallet, and they all looked the same, pretty much. He opened it, hoping to see a contact address on a credit card or something to help him return it to it's owner, but stopped short at what he saw: a single 'D' stamped onto the bottom left corner.

His breath froze in his chest, because that was the same as the one he had given to Dougie, for his birthday, the year before they broke up. 'D' could probably be anybody, but the chances of that…

Danny felt slightly stunned, only vaguely noticing a voice outside the cubicle approaching.

"Excuse me! Sorry, I think I've left something in my changing room!"

There was a knocking at the door, and Danny turned, feeling like fate was conspiring against him. What were the chances of that voice, the voice Danny had only heard in person more than a year ago, being there, right then? A voice that had been on the radio and the television enough since then for others to hear it and fall in love with it, and with the beautiful face that matched it, the face that was on so many posters and magazines.

Danny shook his head, and cleared his throat, closing the wallet. He was still holding onto the tiny chance that it wasn't him. He unlocked the door, and pulled it open, and that tiny chance vanished. Definitely him.

Dougie stopped mid-knock, meeting Danny's eyes, and froze, mouth open. Danny didn't do much better himself.

"Danny?!"

Dougie doesn't quite seem to believe what his eyes are telling him, until Danny makes a kind of strange humming sound in response, which makes him jump towards the guy manning the changing rooms.

"If a guy with brown hair comes here asking for Dougie, tell him I left to look for him in the shop, okay?" Dougie says, smiling still. The guy nods, shrugging like he doesn't really care, and Dougie runs back to where Danny's still standing, pushing him backwards into the tiny room and locking the door behind them again.

"What did you just do?" Danny manages, with only a slight hoarseness to his voice. He coughs quickly, hoping to make his voice seem normal again.

"I want to have some time, and Harry'll be coming after me soon…" Dougie murmurs, looking all over Danny's face, like he's scared he'll disappear in the next second. "Harry is my –"

"Boyfriend. I heard. Possessive is he?"

Danny suddenly feels bitter, and jealous of this model, this other guy who's got Dougie now, even if he told Dougie he didn't want him when they broke up. He didn't really mean it, dammit.

"No. Not exactly," Dougie says furtively, and chews his lip, watching Danny's reaction, but he doesn't understand, because that doesn't make sense… he sees them together, in the papers and on TV and magazines, and the way they touch each other… that's more than friendship.

"Danny… I need to ask you…" Dougie starts, then cuts off suddenly, listening to a voice outside approaching.

"Dougie! Doug! You in here?"

Danny's about to ask Dougie what's going on, but Dougie presses a finger against his lips, pushing him back into the wall slightly, keeping him quiet. Danny tries to keep his heartbeat under control, feeling Dougie's fingers against his chest and lips, and smelling him, so close. He's different, more grown-up, and with a different cologne, but underneath it all is still something familiar that still remains from the time Danny told him he loved him.

"S'cuse me, but have you seen Dougie Poynter? Small, blonde guy?" the same voice from before, asking the man Dougie spoke to earlier. Danny holds his breath while he listens for the response.

"Sorry, sir. He left to find someone in the shop."

Dougie visibly relaxes, and Danny tries not to think about how much he wants to see if Dougie is the same, if he would feel the same way he did when they were together if he touched.

"Sorry 'bout that," Dougie murmurs, stepping back, and then looking down, eyebrows raised in surprise. Danny realises that he had grabbed the hand Dougie had put against him, and releases it quickly, allowing some space between them.

"What are you doing here?" Danny whispers, trying to act like he isn't fazed by Dougie's presence.

"Shopping. Day off between gigs," Dougie says simply, reaching forward and picking a bit of fluff off the shirt Danny was trying on. The gesture is so familiar that Danny wants to scream. "You look good, Dan."

Danny snorts, looking at himself in the mirror of the changing room. He never thought that he and Dougie, of all people, would be the type of couple to awkwardly meet and complement each other because they felt they had to.

"Bet you say that to all your model friends."

He doesn't really want to be bitchy, but he just wants to see if there's any hurt left in Dougie by the memories of what they had. His comment has the desired affect though, with Dougie looking down and the smile vanishing, eyes hardening warily when he looks up again.

"Yeah. I don't mean it with them, though."

Not the sharp retort Danny was expecting, then.

"Sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm just… shocked. To see you."

That brings the smile back to Dougie's face, even if it looks a little shaky. Danny breathes a sigh of relief automatically. He never liked hurting Dougie. The only thing that got him to go through with the break up was knowing that Dougie would be better off for it in the long run, even if Danny wasn't.

"Are you okay? Life been good?"

"Yeah. I'm a music teacher now," Danny says, managing to avoid blurting out how much he's felt like something's been missing for almost a year and a half now.

"Hm. You were always brilliant," Dougie says thoughtfully. Then "I missed you, Dan. That shouldn't be past tense, actually. I do miss you."

The simple clarity and honesty of those words nearly make Danny crumble.

"Yeah. I missed you too."

Then Danny finds himself hugging Dougie, so tightly, breathing him in, and feeling their bodies fit together so perfectly, because even after all this time, they still know each other.

"Danny! Danny, I know you're in here and you're taking forever!" Tom's voice sounds very close by, making Danny and Dougie jump apart.

"I'll be out in a minute!" Danny calls back, hoping Tom will wait outside, or he'll see that he was with Dougie, and he doesn't know how much he can explain to Tom of what he feels, of what's happened.

"Don't give me that crap, Jones! Even you can't spend that long with a few shirts! If it's because you're upset 'cos Dougie was here and you didn't get to tell him how much you still –"

"Stop!" Danny yells, hoping that Dougie doesn't guess what he suspects Tom was about to blurt out about Danny still being in love with him, because that's not supposed to happen.

"Fine, I'm getting the man with the key to break in for me, so stop crying now," Tom calls back, and Danny can hear the worry underlying the defiant tone of his voice. He twists the lock quickly, pulling open the door and just for a second after gets the privilege of seeing Tom lost for words, staring at Dougie, who tentatively raises a hand in greeting.

"Hi, Tom. Good to see you again," Dougie says nervously, stepping away slightly and knocking into the wall of the cubicle in the process. Tom just stares at him, then at Danny, for a few seconds.

"Bloody hell," he mutters, and it's directed at Danny, like maybe the northerner has missed the gravity of the situation until that exclamation. Danny just nods in agreement, sympathising entirely with Tom's feelings.

"I think I ought to go…" Dougie says awkwardly, bouncing on his toes, looking back at Danny. "I'll find you… okay?"

"How?"

Dougie winks, grinning mischievously.

"I have my ways. And the internet. Don't worry."

He eases out past Tom, who's still staring at him from the doorway, like he's some kind of crazy apparition.

"Bye."

And with that, he's gone, leaving Danny and Tom.

"You have a lot of explaining to do," Tom says sternly, closing the door to the changing room behind him.


End file.
